Dark Target (44 page)

“We were standing one hundred yards due east of the porch,” he told his friend. “I paced it when I walked back. Sometimes
low technology still beats high technology. The GPS signal on my phone is off by one hundred yards. This hole was meant for
us.”

“Somebody’d better fill it in,” Sami said. “It could be dangerous if there were kids playing nearby.”

“Somebody will,” DeLuca said, taking out his phone to call Captain Martin. He estimated it would be thirty minutes to an hour
before the Coast Guard and the Massachusetts National Guard could arrive in helicopters to seal off the area. He saw something
on the ground. It was the brass telescope he’d seen on the porch. He picked it up and looked through it, pointing it at a
distant light. It still worked.

He threw it into the hole.

From the corner of his eye, he saw what he thought was a black bear. It was the Newfoundland that had accompanied them on
their walk. In the distance, they saw the red flashing lights of a fire truck approaching.

“Let’s get down to the beach road before the Nantucket FD gets here,” he told Sami. “We don’t want anybody seeing this just
now. When the National Guard arrives, you wanna head back or find a room on the island?”

“I wanna go home,” Sami said. “I don’t care how late it is.”

“I’m with you,” DeLuca said, tossing his satellite phone into the hole as well. “I’m with you.”

THE NEXT DAY, THE PAPERS SAID SCIENTISTS believed the earth had witnessed the collision of two asteroids, a million miles
from earth but close enough that the energy released created the flash viewed by people from Los Angeles to Moscow. A scientist
from NASA said astronomers had had their eye on the two asteroids for some time but thought the likelihood of a collision
was remote. He even produced a scientific paper written in 1983 predicting just such an event, a paper DeLuca knew had not
existed until that morning, just part of the cover story. One lone scientist said a collision of asteroids couldn’t possibly
explain the massive release of gamma radiation from the explosion, but by then the public was too engaged by the cosmic and/or
spiritual dimensions of a “near” miss of an asteroid collision to pay much attention. The paper said a television minidrama
was already in the works, based on how the earth might realistically respond to such a threat.

A second story reported a fire on Nantucket, caused by a lightning strike that destroyed the historic home of General Thomas
Koenig, who died in the fire, along with an aide. National Guard troops and local emergency crews were cleaning up the area
and, DeLuca suspected, filling in a very large hole. DeLuca clipped the article and popped it in the mail to Josh Truitt,
with a note suggesting he share the news with Marvin Yutahay.

DeLuca’s wife had been surprised to see him arrive home at four in the morning, looking tired and limping, but she was glad
to see him. She wasn’t surprised when he told her, after only four hours of sleep, that he needed to go to Washington to meet
with Phil LeDoux. He promised he’d be back that evening. She told him if he had to stay longer, not to worry—another day or
two wasn’t going to make her any more annoyed by the lack of communication than she already was. He told her he’d make it
up to her when he got back.

“You can try,” she said.

“I might not be able to tell you exactly what’s been going on…”

“What else is new?” she said.

He’d asked to meet LeDoux alone. During the flight, he’d tried not to permit himself to think his friend might have betrayed
him. It wasn’t entirely reassuring to consider the alternative, that they’d both been duped.

“I just want you to know I’m goddamned angry,” LeDoux said before DeLuca had a chance to sit down. “I’ve already talked to
Maitland at INSCOM and DIA, and I have a call in to Warren Benjamin. Just so you know.”

“My flight was fine, thanks,” DeLuca said. “They had to de-ice the plane twice, but other than that…”

“I’m sorry,” LeDoux said. “How are you? You’re limping.”

“I’m okay,” DeLuca said. “I fell out of a helicopter.”

“You want to keep that to a minimum,” LeDoux said. “Sit down. Tell me your thoughts. I’ll hold mine for later.”

“We were used,” DeLuca said. “That’s what I think.”

“I agree,” LeDoux said. “I’m trying to find out by whom. Colonel Oswald has been transferred. I can’t find out where, but
I will.”

“We were bait,” DeLuca said. “They couldn’t find Darkstar, so they needed to give Koenig a target, so that they’d know when
and where to look when he fired on it. And I was it. Am I warm?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

“What are they telling you?” DeLuca asked. “That the antimatter explosion everybody saw was caused by an overload?”

“They’re not saying it but they’re implying,” LeDoux conceded.

“What do you think it was?” DeLuca said. “Here’s what I think. I think Darkstar1 took out Darkstar2, and then when Darkstar1
decloaked to fire on me, they took it out with Darkstar3. I think there’s another one up there. And they want everyone to
think the program is down. Yes?”

“I think you’re right,” LeDoux said. “But I don’t know that for sure. What else?”

“Koenig was working for the White House. Just like Ollie North. Apart from using Darkstar to clean up his own personal messes,
he was only doing what he was told. Huston killed Davidova on his own, to protect his boss and curry favor. Mitch Pasternak
said the bullet that went through Davidova’s head came from the same kind of rifle I saw in the picture Huston took of himself
with a deer he shot. And when Carter Bowen tried to rein Koenig in, Koenig wouldn’t listen because he didn’t like civilians
trying to tell him what to do. Is Bowen going to fall?”

“Carla White is announcing his resignation today,” LeDoux said. “For health reasons. How are your people?”

“They’re headed home,” DeLuca said. “I called them this morning. Sami’s flying to Seattle, just to check in on Rainbow. Koenig
wasn’t crazy, was he? He was as sane as you or me.”

“No,” LeDoux said. “He wasn’t crazy. Just inconvenient.”

“We were also used as an OPFOR squadron,” DeLuca said. “To test security at NORAD II. They knew it was empty.”

“They suspected,” LeDoux said. “They’re saying they couldn’t assume. Captain Martin is making inquiries. It wouldn’t be the
first time that was done.”

“Or the last. What’s the Sergelin connection?” DeLuca asked. “Was he the money, or was he the front for the money?”

“When all this began, the Soviet Union was the only country that could shoot down Darkstar,” LeDoux said. “My sense is that
rather than alienate them, it was better to bring them in as a junior partner.”

“That explains why we got a ping from Sergelin’s helicopter the night Darkstar shot down Cabrera’s chopper,” DeLuca said.
“To avoid friendly fire.”

“One of my all-time favorite oxymorons,” LeDoux said. “Sergelin wasn’t working outside his government any more than Koenig
was, though I’m not sure Koenig knew it. We’ve been working with the list of Soviet scientists your friend Gary Burgess gave
us, by the way. Three of them have disappeared. So far. Sergelin’s been arrested.”

“I’m not surprised,” DeLuca said. “So who used us? Who wanted Koenig out? Bowen?”

“I think he had help,” LeDoux said.

“Who?”

“Off the record, it looks like it could be Air Force,” LeDoux said. “A lot of people were not happy when the STRATCOM took
over NORAD. People at the Pentagon who didn’t like how Darkstar’s original mission changed. I’m told they hoped that if they
gave Koenig enough rope, he’d shoot himself in the foot. To very badly mix a metaphor. And so he did. And then some.”

In all his years in the service, DeLuca had seen rivalries and feuds between branches of the service erupt in virtually every
avenue of endeavor. It was the same old shit, different day. The stakes were just higher this time.

“Why Shijingshan?”

“A demonstration,” LeDoux said. “A shot across the bow. The White House has been in trade negotiations with the Chinese for
a while now.”

“Gunship diplomacy?” DeLuca asked.

“Except now the gunships are in orbit twenty-eight thousand miles away,” LeDoux said.

“Was Peggy Romano working for Bowen or the Air Force? I handed her the disk Escavedo stole. That’s what they wanted all along,
wasn’t it? She only gave Walter a fraction of what was on the disk, didn’t she? Just enough not to tip her hand. But why try
to kill us with the oxygen bottles?”

“She was working for the Pentagon. I didn’t know. She was supposed to take the disks, once you found them, and make sure no
one else saw them. It looks like the oxygen thing was actually an accident,” LeDoux said. “There was a recall order issued
on those bottles but the order hadn’t reached her yet. Apparently.”

“Apparently,” DeLuca said. “Darkstar’s mission changed from what? From antisatellite to tactical?”

“Not just that. In its original conception, it was supposed to be powerful enough to blast any asteroid that might be approaching
earth into bits.”

“Asteroids?” LeDoux nodded. DeLuca suddenly saw the story the newspapers were putting about about asteroids colliding as a
kind of preparation. “We’re in danger—do something,” the public would say, and then the Pentagon could reply, “We hear you—we
will.”

“You’re saying this is a big case of mission-creep?” DeLuca asked.

“Big case. From asteroids to satellites. To anti-UFO,” LeDoux said. “I know, I know. This is something they’re never going
to cop to. The belief has been that the possibility of an attack from extraterrestrial forces is real enough to at least prepare
for it. Too many pilots over too many years reporting too many things going zip in the night.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” DeLuca said. “So Mars really does need women? I saw a UFO, Phil, and then Gary Burgess explained
exactly how it could happen.”

“I know,” LeDoux said. “Midnight on the twenty-third, right?”

“Midnight on the twenty-third,” DeLuca said.

“Which was 10:00
A.M.
Moscow time, which was when the rebel brigade attacking Sergelin’s pipeline got vaporized in Chechnya.”

“What’s your point?”

“Those are opposite sides of the earth,” LeDoux said. “Darkstar could do a lot of things, but one thing it couldn’t do was
be in two geostationary orbits on opposite sides of the earth at the same time.”

“Then it was Darkstar3,” DeLuca said.

“D3 wasn’t launched yet,” LeDoux said. “It was launched two days later. Maybe it was your imagination.”

Suddenly DeLuca knew how Sami must have felt.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Meanwhile,” LeDoux said, “we’re not going to loan you out to any joint commands again. That was my mistake. After what you
went through in Iraq, I thought I was lobbing you a softball. It’s my fault that it got to be more than that. We’re clamping
down.”

“Good idea,” DeLuca said. “We wouldn’t want the actual sharing of intelligence resources to compromise a well-oiled military
machine.”

“I don’t need your sarcasm,” LeDoux said. “I have plenty enough of my own to go around. Where are you going next?”

“I promised my wife a vacation in the sun,” DeLuca said. “She found a spa in Arizona she wanted to go to, but I’m feeling
a little burned out on the Southwest. I’m thinking of maybe Key West, or the Caribbean. I feel like I’ve inhaled a lot of
darkness lately. I need a good sunburn.”

“Leave your phone on,” LeDoux said. “We could be sending you to a sunny place some time in the near future.”

“Where?”

“Go on vacation,” LeDoux said. “Put it on your CI card. You’ve earned it. And kiss Bonnie for me. I’ll brief you when you
get back.”

“I almost forgot,” DeLuca said. “One last thing. There’s a lieutenant somewhere named Joyce Reznick, unless she got busted
in rank, too. Koenig had her transferred to get her out of the way. Tell Captain Martin to find her and transfer her back.
See if there’s a recruiting office in Provincetown or Northampton where we could put her to use. Okay? I’ll see you around.”

DAVID DEBATTO
has served in the active-duty Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard as a German linguist, counterintelligence course
instructor, and counterintelligence special agent. He served in Europe at the height of the Cold War in the late 1970s to
early 1980s and in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 where his Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) hunted Saddam,
WMD, and top Ba’ath party leaders. He is currently writing further books in this series for Warner Books along with Pete Nelson
as well as articles for major publications such as
Vanity Fair, Salon,
and
The American Prospect.
He is also a frequent guest on major television and radio news programs giving his analysis of breaking stories in the global
war on terrorism. David lives in Florida.

PETE NELSON
lives with his wife and son in western Massachusetts. He got his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1979
and has written both fiction and nonfiction for magazines, including
Harper’s, Playboy, Esquire, MS, Outside, The Iowa Review, National Wildlife, Glamour,
and
Redbook
. He was a columnist for
Mademoiselle
and a staff writer for
LIVE
magazine, covering various live events including horse pulls, music festivals, dog shows, accordion camps, and arm wrestling
championships. He’s published twelve young adult novels, including a six-book series about a girl named Sylvia Smith-Smith,
which earned him an Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. His young adult nonfiction WWII history,
Left for Dead
(Random House, 2002), about the sinking of the USS
Indianapolis,
won the 2003 Christopher Award and was selected for the American Library Association’s 2003 top ten list. His other nonfiction
titles include
Real Man Tells All
(Viking, 1988),
Marry Like a Man
(NAL, 1992),
That Others May Live
(Crown, 2000), and
Kidshape
(Rutledge Hill, 2004). His novel
The Christmas List
was published by Rutledge Hill Press in 2004.